


Neither Wings, Nor the Ability to Fly

by delgaserasca



Series: Trek Bingo 2020 [4]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Starfleet, M/M, Pre-Slash, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delgaserasca/pseuds/delgaserasca
Summary: Despite his habit of being in the right place at the right time, Jim doesn’t let Spock in on his real plans in case he scares him off for good.In which Jim uses Spock to further his own agenda. Or does he?
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Series: Trek Bingo 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903600
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	Neither Wings, Nor the Ability to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Trek Bingo 2020; prompt _Spy / Secret Agent / Assassins_. Thanks to **[grenadine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grenadine)** for the beta - and the stronghold she exerted on my wayward and haphazard mixing of tenses. I did a whole sweep afterwards, so any remaining errors can only be laid at my own feet.

It doesn’t make any sense. Vulcans are actively non-violent; everyone knows this. The idea that Jim’s been tripping around the galaxy after a phantom and that phantom is Spock is what is that, exactly?

And yet, here they are, face to face, Jim close enough to kill Nero, and Spock between them with a phaser pointing the wrong way.

“Vulcans are _pacifists_ ,” Jim says, desperate, his hands up in a defensive posture.

“I am not entirely Vulcan,” Spock confesses.

*

Jim’s father dies helming a cargo ship so his 40-strong crew and his wife can get to safety when it’s attacked on all sides by pirates. With the Trade Federation proves unable and unwilling to look into the matter of the so-called mining vessel that had crashed into the Kelvin - not to mention six other ships, including a transport cruiser, two medships, and a defunct military scuttle whose only job was to shuttle parts between federal outposts - Winona Kirk inimitably takes things into her own hands, which is how Jim finds himself the recipient of a very specific upbringing, hopping from one end of the Alpha Quadrant to the other in a puddlejumper Winona had stolen from god only knows where, and which is held together with sheer force of will and duct tape.

They don’t find much - oh, plenty interesting in the trade, but not anything relevant to their private vendetta. Jim can jimmy locks and rig a phaser to blow remotely, he can hotwire any tin can that can fly, and he’s never found a firewall he can’t extinguish, but over twenty years later, all he really has to show for it is his mother’s red-eyed paranoia.

Until the Vulcan.

*

He meets Spock out on Bersallis III, chasing down an Andorian - who may or may not know about the Narada - in the middle of the planet’s seven-yearly fire-storm season that somehow hadn’t deterred the Federation from establishing a settlement there. Spock is there in some sort of official capacity on behalf of the Vulcan Authority which, despite its aversion to everything the Federation stands for, has managed to embed a research facility on every single colony and outpost the Federation has staked a claim on.

Jim finds himself teetering off the edge of the obs deck when the gale force winds bring down the transmission tower, and that would have been it for him had Spock not materialized, pulling him back to relative safety. Spock breaks his wrist but saves his life, and in return, Jim helps him off-planet before the weather that’s amassing with prejudice breaks over the horizon.

He’s just supposed to deliver Spock to Doctari Alpha when the Vulcan lets loose furtive confirmation of something Winona has always held to be true, but has never been able to prove: the Vulcan Authority knows the location of the Narada and her erstwhile captain, Nero. One of Spock’s many and varied responsibilities involves triangulating data on the ship from each of Vulcan’s numerous research centers, and analyzing the output for anything concrete regarding the Narada’s origin and capabilities. The Authority hasn’t actually managed to seize the ship, and Spock himself doesn’t know the root of what he’s actually investigating, but Jim knows enough to be certain for him.

So he strikes a deal: in thanks for Spock saving his life, Jim will cart him from port to port, happy enough to play a charming and hapless chauffeur. If Spock is confused by the proposal, he doesn’t say so, but then confusion isn’t exactly a Vulcan habit.

*

The two years that follow fly by in a string of milk runs that Jim often uses as a cover for his own needs. Spock heads down to each station to complete his inspections, and Jim finds work, having enough self-awareness to know his hands should never be idle. Early on, Spock had insisted on compensating Jim for the fuel, but obviously hadn’t known the value of an issek, and Jim, knowing he was liberally taking payment in the form of information, had asked for a paltry sum, barely enough to cover their rations. He takes on jobs, cargo runs or protection deals, and the occasional downmarket hit when called for, squirrelling away the funds for later, and always makes sure to be back on the shuttle in time to pick Spock up and take him to his next stop.

But Spock pays in other ways, too, proving himself useful by sitting down to clear out the warp filters, or helping Jim rig up ventilation so the engines didn’t overheat as often. As Jim steers them from base to base, Spock sits in the galley, dismantling the grilles to get access to some component or another, long fingers nimbly extracting the casings and clearing or repairing them as needed with delicate and precise care. Jim cooks, and Spock cleans; Jim flies, and Spock fixes. It’s a comfortable routine.

Or, it had been, until Spock realized the somewhat unsavory nature of Jim’s work.

"You are a pirate,” Spock observes dispassionately on Narendra IV, after helping to free Jim from the clutches of some particularly obstinate Klingons.

Jim objects to the term on principle, but doesn’t refute the core accusation. “When I need to be,” he says, one hand braced against the wall, panting for breath, and looking askance at the Klingons knocked out on the floor. “How did you do that?”

Spock pushes him aside roughly, ducking to the ground to pick up a phaser and shoot a third assailant who had been coming up on Jim from behind.

“He is merely stunned,” Spock says, ignoring Jim’s question. “It would be wise to depart sooner rather than later.”

And that’s Spock in a nutshell: severe, implacable, and impeccably placed. A Vulcan, with all that entails, but somehow the first person Jim has ever met that he hasn’t wanted to leave behind.

*

The thing is - the thing is, Jim probably should have figured sooner rather than later that Spock isn’t everything he purported to be. Sure, Vulcans have an outsized mental capacity when you stick them next to your average humanoid, but Spock is suspiciously well-versed in all the things Jim needs from him: mechanics, mathematics, spatial telemetry, astrophysics. Some of that can be hand-waved by his profession, but most of it is too good to be true. Spock is unmatched in navigation, even better with computers, and by the time he’s cottoned on to Jim’s not-exactly-above-board skill set, he is also, it turns out, a pretty good pilot. Anything he doesn’t know, he picks up fairly quickly, but the real alarm bells should have started ringing the moment he’d seen the Klingons and decided to stay on board anyway.

“What gives, Spock?” Jim asks, wary and wounded, and self-medicating with Saurian brandy.

“It seems apparent,” Spock answers, his touch surprisingly tender as he cleans the cuts along Jim’s jaw, “that you are singularly incapable of maintaining your own good health.”

*

Despite his habit of being in the right place at the right time, Jim doesn’t let Spock in on his real plans in case he scares him off for good. Not that Vulcans do fear, per se, but Spock has a Vulcan’s disposition towards honesty that means he’s typically over reliant on specifics, but doesn’t like it when Jim obfuscates. In an effort at self-preservation that has undoubtedly come off the rails, Jim decides that means he should keep his cards close to his chest when they count the most, but that everything else is fair game.

Spock is surprisingly good at getting Jim out of tight situations, and even better at reading his moods. He has a funny thing about violence, in that he’ll commit it begrudgingly, but he never shoots to kill. Jim’s seen Spock take out an Orion with what looks like a solid grip to the shoulder, and, on one notable occasion, seems to _stare_ someone into unconsciousness, but Jim tries to keep him away from the nastier jobs he picks up. Despite himself, Jim gets to liking the company, and Spock, for all that he’s dour-faced and particular, is easy to get along with.

Which is why, when Jim finally gets a mark on the Narada, the whiplash is extreme.

*

He’s looking at a stranger, Jim thinks. The Vulcan in front of him, hair askew, eyes wild, pointing a phaser at his head - that’s not his Spock. His Spock has warm eyes, despite his best attempts to the contrary, and is meticulous about his attire and habits. His Spock wouldn’t know the kill setting on a phaser if it was lit up in neon, and Jim’s supposed to, what, believe that this whole time, this _whole time_ , Spock’s been the one using Jim instead?

(Afterwards, Spock will say, “I was first made aware of your preoccupation with Nero when you embarked from Mars,” and shit, Jim will think, that was his first run, his first go solo without Winona or Bones to back him - that was _six years ago_.)

Spock’s hand is remarkably steady. If Jim didn’t know he was a Vulcan, he’d be impressed that there isn’t a lick of sweat on him. There’s something recognizable in his disarray, something familiar. He can’t see the Spock he knows, but he knows this frenzy; it’s fuelled him from one Trade Federation Slipstream to the next, kept him going through dead ends and broken bones, pushed him from one scantily-paid con to another until he had his own ship, his own guns, and his own name, ready to choke Nero on it when he finally dies by his hand.

“I was on the Kelvin,” Jim says, taking a chance, hands still in the air. Somewhere behind Spock, Nero is unconscious, hopefully bleeding out. “Ma gave birth to me just before the ship blew.”

“My mother was on the Halcyon,” says Spock.

“The transport cruiser?” Jim asks, like he doesn’t know every ship the Narada plowed through twenty-something years ago. He sucks air through his teeth in a grimace. “Twelve hundred souls on that thing.”

“Twelve hundred and thirty eight,” Spock corrects.

“And your mom,” says Jim.

“Indeed.”

“So why,” Jim hisses, “are you pointing that damn thing at _me_?”

“Because,” Spock says, “I am placing you under arrest.”

*

Spock doesn’t work for the Authority, not directly. His thorough education in the sciences had won him a real job, but he’d applied for it as a means to an end. Bersallis III had been his first inspection, and he’d known Jim would be there because he’d been the one to plant the rumor about an Andorian with more information than he ought to have.

Spock, it turns out, works for an organisation known as Section 31.

“He’s a spook,” Jim says, tone flat with incredulity. “The hell did you need me for if you’re all spooks?” He’s never encountered the Service himself, but he’s heard the stories; he knows the kind of firepower Sec 31 has as its disposal. Not quite police, not quite military, they have more power than the Trade Federation and the Vulcan Authority combined. There’s not a lot of honor in that particular game.

“Nero was aware of our interest,” the man in front of him says. He’d introduced himself as Agent Pike, but something about it doesn’t sound right. Turns out, he’d known Jim’s father a long time ago; Jim’s not sure what to make of that. “The problem wasn’t intel; we had that by the boatload. What we needed was access.” Jim’s shuttle was small enough to go undetected; Jim himself minor enough to not warrant Nero’s attention.

“He killed my father,” Jim spits, hurt, despite himself.

“He killed a lot of people,” Pike reminds him. “Healers and doctors, merchants and tradespeople.” He cocks his head. "You’ve killed a few yourself,” he adds.

It’s true, but none since Spock turned up. Spock has very clean hands for a member of an elite secret agency that is reported to be behind most of the fundamental shifts in power in the Quadrant. Clever, Jim thinks, sending a Vulcan. He’d never have guessed at what lay beneath that inexorable facade.

“Well, you’ve got me now,” Jim says, raising his hands from where they’re chained to the table, impeded in their progress by the lack of give. “What do you want?”

“What I want,” Pike says, “is to offer you a job.”

> _And my small lesson? Human to want the company  
>  of others, and human, too, to find loneliness among them._
> 
> _**— C. Dale Young, Ruins** _

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> In theory this is the start of a much longer story where Jim and Spock meet up again and work through this awkward time in their lives where they lied to one another over and over, but until then, the title, most fittingly, comes from C. Dale Young's [Ruins](https://motherground.tumblr.com/post/35262387824/ruins) which is _crushing_.


End file.
